by Faith Hunter
Once alone, alone for the first time in weeks, I locked the door. With the earth-salt from my reticule, I poured a narrow ring of protection around the tub, peeled the sticky clothes from my body, placed my amulet necklace on the small table by the tub, and sank into the steamy heated water for a long-overdue scrub and soak. The heat soothed the puckered, pale scars that traced up my limbs, and warmth seeped into my bones, easing their ache.
The water cooled. Dripping onto the floor, I reached for an amulet, dropped it into the water, and released a Heating spell, the power in the stone warming the water fast. I’d needed something to do on the long trip, so I’d stepped out to collect likely rocks every time the train stopped, and made conjure amulets of them. It had been that or shooting someone. Amulets were more productive, and now I had all sorts of helpful stones in my suitcase as well as the fully charged necklace.
I heard my champards come in, voices muffled. Smelled the meal they ordered. Felt the vibrations as they moved around and settled. Heard Rose as she joined them, chattering. I got out and dried off and plaited my clean, wet, scarlet hair. It had been damaged over the last months, but had grown out fast. I dressed in nightclothes and a robe, though it was summer in the Deep South and the rooms were warm. And still my champards were lively.
I opened the door and stood in the shadows of the main room, watching, silent. Audric, Thadd, Rose, and Eli were playing cards, some fast-paced game with lots of shouting. There were bottles of beer on the table, and spicy scents in the air.
Ciana, the child of my soul, curled beneath a blanket on a sofa, eating ice cream, her mouth ringed with chocolate. Lucas, my ex-husband, had a book open on his knees, telling her about the school she would be attending. A fire blazed merrily in the fireplace.
It warmed my heart to see them having fun. Together. Even Rose, who was losing badly and didn’t seem to care. My sister was beautiful tonight, all her glamours stripped away, glowing with mage-light.
The evil suspicion raced through me that she had killed and drained someone to glow with such power. She wouldn’t. She had sworn. At the thought, my hunger fled. I closed the door and crawled beneath the coverlet to sleep.
I was wakened by the sound of fists thundering on the inn’s door. Heard voices, then quiet whispers outside my room. Some of my champards were unwilling to wake me; others felt I needed to be informed of whatever had occurred. “I’m awake,” I called out.
Lucas opened the door and said into the crack, “Thorn, there are two mu— two second unforeseen at the registration desk. They’re asking to be hired on.”
I thought for a moment, and drew on the visa, just in case the seraphic intelligence within it had an opinion. Oddly, it did. Presentation to the Enclave Council will be formal. There is security in numbers.
I said, “Audric, do we need the numbers?”
“Numbers will enhance the esteem of the consul-general of the Battle Station Consulate of Mineral City,” he said formally.
If they swear to my senior champard, is that enough, or do they have to swear to me? I asked the visa.
Instantly it replied. If they are to be paid servants, then to the senior. If they are to become champards, then to the consul-general. The visa was unusually cooperative tonight. I wondered if it was because I was so close to the Enclave. I still didn’t know much about mage visas. The seraphic artifacts weren’t powered by Enclaves, nor by the wearer. Perhaps they received some power from the seraphs, or from a self-contained infinite power source in a Realm of Light. Or perhaps from the Most High himself. However they were powered, mine was taking some energy from the ambient power of Enclave and I felt its might on my skin.
“Audric, as senior champard, you may accept their vows of allegiance,” I said.
“As my mistrend decrees.” The door closed.
Audric was still grieving. But at some point we would be in front of the council. I hoped by then that he’d be less hostile. His icy tone was unlikely to inspire confidence in the council at a time when I needed them to respect me. Fear me. Yes. Fear would keep me safer than respect or even love.
I dropped my head back to the pillow. It was damp and I palmed a Drying charm to dry both hair and pillow. And a Warming one to heat my feet. It was summer, but cold snaps still occurred when the winds blew strong off the glaciers, in some places only six hundred miles to the north. These temps in the forties were chilling even through the mage-spelled panes of window glass—mages created built-in failures for everything sold to humans, so they’d eventually have to come back to us to buy more. Tomorrow it might be in the eighties again, or even the nineties, the humidity even higher, but for tonight it was unseasonably chilly.
As the sheets warmed, I thought again about having more people around me. And the boulders I had brought. And the church stones. Using all that rock might allow me a suitable power sink without drawing on the one below the Enclave, maybe even without going blooey. Having that independent might was essential to my bargaining power and any future plans we might define.
Just before daybreak, I rose, dressed, tied my amulet necklace around my waist like a belt, put others in my pockets. I tried to be quiet, but woke several of my champards, and we ate breakfast in the common room together—boiled eggs, French toast, oatmeal, and fresh honey for me, while the others dined on various fried and spiced meats.
Thadd informed me, “Audric rented a carriage large enough for us all, so your creation energy doesn’t cause an El-car to go on the fritz.” Though his seraphic scent was muted beneath the power of the seraph stones we both wore, he smelled of caramel, vanilla, brown sugar, and ginger, the scent mélange like a candy shop. His jovial eyes were the greenish-blue of the ocean in spring, long red hair curled over his brow, and his red-gold beard was clipped short. He’d let his hair and beard grow when he realized he would never again work as a detective with Carolina State Law Enforcement.
My champards had lost so much fighting Darkness, but today Eli’s amber eyes glinted with mischief. “Our Thorn can take out anything electronic or mechanical.”
Audric’s full lips shone with honey as he said, “Clyde looked at the harness and then at me and kicked the stall. I don’t think they want to be hitched to the carriage.”
“I hear that the city fathers got the old trolley up and running,” Eli said. “Never been on a trolley.”
“Streetcar,” Audric said, sounding more relaxed than in weeks. “Locals call it a streetcar. Never a trolley.”
I listened to them banter and gibe, and felt some of the misery of the last years fall away.
When we were done, we left the inn and Audric brought the carriage around. The Friesian and the Clydesdale looked odd together in harness, but the mismatched animals were just another level of disguise. No one would expect a mage to have mismatched horses, not in New Orleans where all mages were unfailingly wealthy—or at least the ones allowed in public.
Together, we left the warded city, Audric, Eli, Thadd and I. I wasn’t appearing as the CG, so I wore a simple dress and leggings with boots, a scarf over my hair, my sword sheathed at my hip but no fighting leathers. It was freeing to not be the only mage in town, to have no responsibilities, and to know that the lives of everyone in a hundred miles did not depend on me. The strange freedom made me even more introspective than usual. Even with the newness and excitement of being back in New Orleans, I couldn’t seem to find the energy to be chatty. Chatty wasn’t my nature.
As we rode, I took in the sights. Three parks planted around the entry to the city’s ward-gate were abundantly green. The streets were free of potholes and perfectly straight. Black cast iron was abundant in street lights, benches, and ornate streetcar stops. Mage magic had been used well and often here. I wondered what the city fathers were trading for it.
By daylight, New Orleans’ unique scents had softened. The smell of horse, salt water from the Gulf, the iron-like scent of the Mississippi River, rotting vegetation, fish, coffee, and cooking was everywhere. No smell of
ice sheets. No scent of stone or pine. It was so different from the scents of home, even different from the places we had traveled through to get here. It was also different from the life I had lived as a child in the confines of Enclave. It left me unsettled and the men seemed to understand, engaging in their usual banter without me, enjoying the pale sunlight of the early day.
We left Thadd at the railyard to finish unpacking the train while Audric departed on foot to run errands, restock our supplies, and listen to the locals. We needed intel and humans carried gossip from Enclave daily.
Eli and I took the carriage the short distance to the banks of the Mississippi. There were tracks in the sand, and I remembered the screams in the night. Darkness had crawled from the waters, attacked, and eaten, leaving the decomposing, ravaged remains of wild boar. Homer tossed his head, his black mane flying, feet prancing in distress at the stench of Darkness and blood. “Eeeeasy. Whoa,” Eli murmured to the horses. The carriage slowed to a stop.
According to Pre-Ap maps, the Mississippi had once carried less water during spring melt and flood seasons than she did now, and her east bank had been much farther to the west on the other side of a levee. Now New Orleans stopped at Magazine Street, while across the river, Algiers, Federal City, and McDonough had been wiped away by floods before the construction of the Enclave. Now floods were held back by water mages, which was a much more successful means of controlling rampaging waters than earthen dikes and levees. Now conjures kept the Mississippi in its new banks, leaving a wide sandy shore between river and Enclave.
A permanent, preset circle had been burned into the sand, scorched to glass by Sun mages. The twenty-four foot circle incorporated stone, air bubbles, moonstones, and greenery frozen as if in amber. It was beautiful, a glistening greened brilliance. The circle was covered by a lesser, but permanent ward, with protected entrances direct to the Enclave dome itself safe from Darkness, water, and humans, easily available for use by any mage.
I leapt from the carriage to the sand. Eli followed, carrying a bag of my own salt, mined from below ground. He stood watch as I studied the ward in mage sight to get a feel how it was put together. It had a simple on-off mechanism. With a touch the ward fell. I walked the circled and then poured the precious salt into place.
I sat at the center, on the dry sand, and thumbed a stone fish on my amulet necklace, opening a portable ward before I let down my defenses. Satisfied, I went to work. I needed to see how the mage conjure that created and powered the city ward was set up, how power reached from the Enclave to the ward, where and how the port was protected, how the Enclave itself was protected, and a dozen other things. Mostly to see if the visa would allow me to draw power from the power sink far below ground in bedrock, just in case my own power sink was not enough to protect me from the priestess.
That was my first goal and I was successful. For now at least, the power of Enclave was accessible to me. I followed the creation energy links deep into the earth, running through the water, flashing through the air, followed them, learning them, figuring out how I might use them.
Hours later, feeling refreshed, I opened my eyes to see Eli surrounded by dozens of second unforeseen. The men and women were rough-looking, people who clearly lived on the outskirts of society. Perhaps even pirates. The river was known to be ruled by brigands in small skiffs who took what they could steal from smaller merchants, always hiding from what was left of the Navy. Dangerous, elusive. Yet no one except Eli had drawn a weapon. His old six-shooter was aimed at the group, though it was hard to cover so many with so little.
I stood, smoothed my skirts, and dropped my circle. “Is there a problem,” I said, making it statement. But the visa took it upon itself to boom the words, so they sounded like a challenge. Almost as one, the interlopers turned toward me. Eli didn’t shoot, and I thought that was a good omen.
One woman, smaller than the others, took a single step to me and bowed. She had dark-copper skin and kinky hair, an upturned nose, and for some reason reminded me of Lolo, though perhaps only because I missed the old priestess so much. She wore shirt and trousers, held up by suspenders, and mud-covered boots. She was armed to the teeth.
“My name is Zoeheret, second unforeseen,” she said. “We wish negotiations with the consul-general’s champards.”
I realized they didn’t know me, not with my scars glamoured and wearing a dress instead of a dobok. SNN had most often captured me in fighting gear, not in the garb of a shopkeeper and jewelry maker. From the scabbard at my side, I drew my weapon and stepped into the goose stance, the sword held two-handed, blade high. The pink quartz pommel caught the noon sun and blazed, as did the visa and my prime amulet. “I’m listening.”
Eli sighed, a theatrical sound, and holstered his gun. “Woman. I tried to protect your privacy.”
“You are the consul-general?” She sounded unbelieving. I dropped my glamour, letting my scars shimmer. Stepped toward her, toward Eli, forcing them back. But Zoeheret fell to her knees in the sand. “The second unforeseen have been awaiting your army. We are yours to command.”
“Well blow it out Gabriel’s shorts,” I swore. Eli laughed with an I told you so, tone. Because her words sounded like prophecy. Prophecy always meant battle and death and I was so very tired of both. “Can you fight?” I asked, strangling my emotional reaction to her words.
“We are trained in savage-blade and savage-chi.” She nodded to two mountainous men. “Clemet and Clovis are especially skilled. We are fast, strong, and loyal. Will you have us?”
“Fine.” I lowered my blade. “I accept your allegiance, as warriors and employees. I have enough champards and most of them are completely without manners.” Eli laughed.
Back at the carriage, I divided them into four groups and sent them to seek Audric, sending a note with Zoeheret. With their help, Audric could get the two hundred-pound stones into place at cardinal points quickly. It was a good use of time and money. And an army of second unforeseen seemed like a good thing to have around.
Satisfied with the work and the things I had learned, I let Eli take me to a late lunch at a bistro that served a vegetarian peanut-and-filé gumbo, better than anything I had tasted in the last decade. Served with fresh bread and a glass of wine, it was fabulous. Sitting in the warm sun, in a public place, under glamour, ensuring that no one knew me, was even better.
But while we were away, things happened.
Near sunset, we returned and Audric met me at the inn’s door, his dark-skinned face scowling, long furrows on either side of his mouth. “The priestess,” he said before I could speak, “sent a mage with a missive, demanding you attend her.”
“Oh!” It came out breathless.
“That mage,” he snarled, “threatened, postured, made demands that you appear, and was dumbfounded when no one could make it happen.”
I looked around the foyer to find no strange mage, just three of the inn’s staff, watching with overly curious eyes. I should take this upstairs. “Where is he?” I asked, worrying about rumors. The priestess should not have summoned me until I was scheduled to appear.
“He’s gone,” Audric growled, the tone deeper.
“Good,” I said, pushing past him to the stairs.
“Thorn!” he thundered.
That tone snapped me out of my slightly sunburned and happy mood. I stopped, one foot on the stairs, one hand on the banister.
“You will not turn your back on me! You did not inform the priestess that we had arrived, which was a foolish political mistake. It’s irresponsible to incite the most powerful mage on the coast!”
I didn’t move. The silence in the registration area was absolute for a dozen heartbeats and then I heard the sound of running feet as the staff disappeared. I realized that my glamour had slipped; my neomage attributes were glowing. And I was . . . furious. Because this was not about the priestess or a importunate mage. Foolish. Irresponsible. This was about Rupert.
Slowly, I turned to my senior champard, my body
glimmering with mage might. Unconsciously, I drew on the stones of the old churches. “What did you say?” I whispered, my words a breath of sound.
“I said you were stupid.”
My body blazed. My visa woke up, confused, as if it had been sleeping. “Just like I was stupid when Rupert died? Rupert, who was my best friend long before he was your lover?” I stepped toward him, balanced, rooted in the earth, in the bedrock so far below the surface. My prime and every defensive amulet had warmed, ready to be activated, their heat growing against my waist where the necklace was tied. “Rupert, who was beyond all but the healing power of a seraph?” My eyes blazed, but when I spoke it was less than a breath. “Rupert, whose blood will stain my soul, if I have one, until I stand before the High Host?”
“You will not,” he rumbled, “bring Rupert Stanhope into this!”
“Rupert Stanhope is this! He is all of this!” My hand flashed back and forth between us. “Nothing that is now would be so if not for his life, his love, and his death.” Tears burst from my eyes at the last word and flowed down my face. Audric’s skin went darker with rage, veins bulging. I clenched my fists to keep from striking him. “Rupert is gone,” I whispered through a tight throat, made worse by the scarred tissues there. “Both our pledges are foresworn.”
Audric took an unwitting step back. “I will keep my vow to you,” he said.
I quoted, “‘I will hold you in the highest regard, and I will serve you and train you to the best of my ability. I will dress you for battle, and should you die by the sword, I will dress you for burial. All that, I swear.’ That pledge? The sworn regard that allowed you to call me stupid? Made you attempt to shame me in front of our friends? Well, you didn’t shame me, Audric. You shamed only yourself. And Rupert. You shamed him too.” I turned and swept past him and up to my room.
I was halfway there when the alarms sounded.
I stopped, not sure what it meant, the hooting blaring sound, and then I knew. Darkness. Something was attacking. With mage speed, I raced to my room and threw off my clothing, pulling on skin-tight undergarments and slithering into the new dobok. I hadn’t worn the new leathers yet. We had picked them up in Birmingham, where a group of licensed mages had opened a leather shop specializing in fighting leathers. The armor tingled against my flesh, the creation energies worked into them by Earth mages, defensive conjures that protected against the claws, fangs, and saliva of minor Darkness. They were black as night, conjured to form to my body, and they slid onto me like a second skin.